Text Book Adoption

Math Adoption

Day 5 - Deliberation Day

Today, after the long and careful evaluation process was completed, deliberation was held on what math programs will be recommended for next year's math adoption. After one day of professional development and almost four days of evaluating the math programs, the power of numbers spoke for which program each of the school levels recommend. Before the deliberation, one math committee member stated, "I'm curious because although we gave the total numbers, we were so focused on evaluating the materials that we didn't really pay attention to the overall points. Also, we don't know what the other teams in our school level gave." At one of the grade levels, the group came together and said, "We know what the program is going to be in our grade level, but now we need to collaborate on how we are going to present it [program] back to our sites."

This was the process that the math committee members went through to select the math textbooks:

used 5 different rubrics to evaluate each program supported by evidence: standards, mathematical practice, universal access, major clusters, assessment and technology

groups were by garde-levels, departments

we all went through common core training, discussing the shifts: focus, rigor, and coherence

everyone had an equal voice

deliberation was based on data

very in-depth process

group scores, not individual (with consensus)

multiple data sources (surveys)

final decisions based on AAA recommendations

groups reviewed between 5-7 different curriculum

scores based on: not met/met/fully met

looked at multiple lessons across grade levels

tallied total score for overall total score for each part

Arturo Ortega, Assistant Superintendent, presented the overall chart to each grade level. At first, there was some silence from the grade levels when the results were revealed. After members read through the overall points, for each of the programs that were evaluated this week, they brought discussions up to the group. Some emotions were presented in the discussion, however, when the focus was brought back to the process, the members agreed that the process of this week should speak for the math program that "fully met" or "met" the criteria that was asked on the rubric, which was used to evaluate the programs.

“When we think about learning, we typically focus on getting information into students’ heads. What if, instead, we focus on getting information out of students’ heads?”

Pooja Agarwal, Henry Roediger, Mark McDaniel & Kathleen McDermott

Math Curriculum Viewing - Starting Tuesday (November 17), math teachers can go to the district office to view the math publishers that were selected by the committee members.

Day 3 & 4 - Two Days of Evaluation

The math committee members had two full days to evaluate the textbooks/materials, using the five part protocol that was created by the math coaches. The pacing of each individual team could not be predicted so the teams were given up to Friday morning to complete the evaluation. Tomorrow at 1PM, the deliberation will be delivered! Arturo Ortega, Assistant Superintendent, will announce the points that each math teams gave for the five parts protocol, and the overall score. May the power of the numbers reveal the winning publisher(s) tomorrow! This is a closed deliberation, but the results of the verdict will be posted afterwards.

Below are the rubrics that the math teacher committee used to evaluate the textbook/materials.

Today marked the beginning of our math textbook evaluation week! The math adoption committee reviewed the scoring process instructions. One of the processes to be considered this week is evaluating the social content. Some of the textbooks piloted in AUSD were not on the California list of submitted adopted mathematics programs; therefore, the social content has not been evaluated. [Click on the picture below to find out more about the social content evaluation]

The math committee will use a five part rubric to evaluate math textbooks. Today the committee evaluated Part 1, involving math percision. Closeley examining two lessons from each publisher, committee members scored each lesson on a Likert scale of 0=Not Met, 1=Met, or 3=Fully Met. The teams discussed how they would differentiate the scores of 1 or 3 in order to maintain consistency with their scoring for each publisher.

The following is a list of textbooks to be evaluated this week:

Elementary:

Eureka (Engage New York)

Everyday Math

Learn Zillion

Math Expressions

Swun

Middle School:

Big Ideas

California Math

Carnegie

CPM

Eureka (Engage New York)

Learn Zillion

Swun

High School

Big Ideas

California Math

Carnegie

CPM

Math Vision

Day 1 - Math Adoption Professional Development Day

Elementary Math Coach Julie McGough delivered Thursday's Professional Development (PD). A full day packed with an overview of information, AUSD math teachers gained deeper understanding of the big ideas and common language of Common Core. The information presented will equip teachers to evaluate math curriculum using a five part protocol to find evidence of Common Core criteria in publishers' textbooks, programs, and materials.

[Below are some great resource videos that Julie shared with the math adoption committee.]

Current studies show that almost half of today's high school students in the US are under prepared for college-level math. Why aren't US students excelling in math? Scholastic Math stated it well in this video:

There are three major shifts in Common Core mathematics: focus, coherence, and rigor.

This 14-minute video provides an overview of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics by including an introduction to the standards, as well as a discussion about what it means to implement these standards.

Jo Boaler, an author of Mathematical Mindset from Stanford University, explained that math must include questions that are on different levels, not just multiple choice. During the PD, math teachers participated in a Performance Task and shared their perspectives with one another.

[Below the video are pictures of different teachers' perspective of the cube growing task question.]

Arturo Ortega, Assistant Superintendent of Education Services, provided closure with final words, and answered several questions that the math committee members had about the following week. Arturo commented to the math committee, "We are not having publishers come and try to sell us their bells and whistles of their products. We want the product to speak for themselves and that is what we are going to do next week using the five part protocols that the math coaches developed from the LACOE Toolkit."

Deliberation Day

Arturo responded that he was more excited for what comes after this process (e.g. meeting with our possible new partners, professional development, training, creating curricular maps, support, etc.).

Arturo Ortega, Assistant Superintendent, and Dayna Mitchell, Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, would like to thank the math committee members for their professionalism and dedication this week. It was a sacrifice for the members to come out of their schools for five days to be involved in this process.